The comedy “One Man, Two Guvnors” features raucous bursts of audience participation (a polite term, maybe, for “people getting dragged onstage”). The Tony Award-winning musical “Once,” set in an Irish pub, opens up its onstage watering hole before each performance to let playgoers drink and hang out with cast members.

Even “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” gets into the act a little: The villain Green Goblin (played until Aug. 5 by Old Globe Theatre associate artist Patrick Page) jaws with audience members like a stand-up comic.

The confluence might just be coincidence (and live-theater interactivity is not exactly a new thing). Still, a play that’s about to premiere in San Diego seems right in tune with its Broadway brethren.

Steven Oberman’s “Vanished,” like “Once,” opens with a toast. A living-room cocktail party is in progress, and playgoers are invited to grab a drink and join in for the show’s first 30 minutes or so.

“They can mill around with the actors, who are in character, and find out about them,” says Oberman, a former Moonlight Stage Productions marketing guy turned playwright.

The idea for “Vanished” sprouted after Oberman read Philip Wylie’s novel “The Disappearance,” about a mysterious event that causes males and females to be split into separate worlds.

“Vanished” dispenses with the sci-fi elements and focuses on how such a schism affects a family and changes the thinking of a husband and wife who are going through a divorce (something Oberman himself has experienced).

As he was developing the piece, Oberman “really wanted it to be a comedy,” he says. “But it was coming out as a bit of a drama. I was thinking, ‘What could I do to make it more amusing?’ And I thought, ‘If the audience could participate, that just makes it so much more fun.’ ”

He scouted further ideas for interactivity at the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and has put together a cast with plenty of improv experience. Among other participatory elements, the audience will be asked to choose one of two possible endings.

Oberman, by the way, is self-producing the show, and he’s using his own living-room furniture as the set.